Alex's This and That

Ratings: 1 star=worst, 5 stars=best (previously 4 stars)

Books
Tart of Darkness - Denise Swanson ****


Current Book(s):
The Legend of Anne Bonny - Robert Q. Hoyt


Books to Read:
The Silence of the Library - Miranda James
A Marvellous Light - Freya Marske
Witch - Barbara Michaels
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Four Leaf Cleaver - Maddie Day
Wretched Waterpark - Kiersten White
Hither Page - Cat Sebastian
Together We Burn - Isabel Ibañez
Arsenic and Old Books - Miranda James
Six Feet Deep Dish - Mindy Quigley


Fanfics Written this year to date:
Among the Flowers - Keeping Up Appearances
The Man Who Wasn't There - Mad Men
Stress and the Superhero - MCU - Fan Flashworks
One Man's Ceiling )(is another man's floor) - Supernatural - Fan Flashworks
Sunshine on My Shoulders - MCU
One Night with You - MCU


Word Counts:
January - 3107


Films
Films @ Home:
The Adam Project ****
The Six Triple Eight *****
Jazz Ramsey: A K-9 Mystery***
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl ****
Dashing Through the Snow ****
Reality Bites: A Hannah Swenson Mystery ***
A Haunting in Venice ****


Films @ Cinema:
A Complete Unknown *****


Films to see:
Captain America: Brave New World
Thunderbolts*


TV Shows:
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew *****



A Challenge for myself:
Sunday - Give thanks. Talk about something in your life you're thankful for. Even if it's tiny.
Monday - Music Monday. Anything about the music you listen to or like; artist profiles, recs, reviews, anything
Tuesday - Artistic stuff like fiction writing or writing of any sort, knitting, sewing, carpentry... whatever you do or have done.
Wednesday - Reading
Thursday - Throwback Thursday. Childhood memories, old photos, old blog posts...stuff from the past
Friday - Fandom stuff. Faves, new ones, actors, musicians, anything you're a fan of want to talk about.
Saturday - somebody, anybody. Your best friend, the Pope, Julius Caesar.. anyone at all

*

Other Places to find me on the internet:

Dreamwidth:
http://alexcat.dreamwidth.org/

Slashy Santa Tolkien slash challenge:
http://www.slashysanta.com/eFiction/viewuser.php?action=storiesby&uid=9 (alexcat)

AO3:
http://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat

Facebook:
Comment and I’ll send you my info. Or you can friend Alex Cat HERE: https://www.facebook.com/alex.cat.9862?fref=ts

Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/alexcat45

~~~~

Dragons
My Scroll

Dragons





My Scroll.

 Basics
Name: alexcat
Age: 65
Location: Southern US
Other blogs/socials: alexcat45 at Tumblr and alexcat45 or alex_writes on Discord

Dreamwidth Stuff
What do you post about? Fandom stuff, fics, life in general(friends)
How often do you post? Whenever I write something usually. I am way too lazy.
What communities, if any, are you involved in? I write some challenge fics for cap_ironman and fan_flashworks. I host fandom50challenge.
What kind of accounts do you like to follow? I like to read about other people's daily lives if they like to share. I like fandom and fic oriented posts as well.

Fandom Stuff
Fandoms: MCU, Sherlock Holmes, Babylon 5, Tolkien - and others.
Favorite Characters: Steve Rogers, Sherlock Holmes, John Sheridan(B5) and Tolkien's elves.
Ships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes... you get the drift.
Things you're into but not fannish about: I LOVE Star Wars but am not in the fandom.

I Designed This Meme So I Get To Ask Weird Stuff
Explain your username: Many years ago when I had to come up with a username, I was into CATS with my daughter AND I have been obsessed with Alexander the Great since I was in 3rd grade so... alexcat came about.
Favorite season (it's ok if it's not summer): Fall. It reminds me of buying notebooks and pencils when I was a kid, as well as the county fair, Halloween and my birthday in November. An added bonus is cool weather.
What's your vibe? I am not sure I have a vibe... I am a grumpy old cat so that might be my vibe.
What is your summeriest fandom? (You can interpret this however you like….): This is strange but MCU, probably Nat and Steve... they like the outdoors.
Opening song on your summer mixtape: "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith. I remember hot days at the beach as a teen with Aerosmith playing loudly on the jukebox while we played Eight Ball in the Pier House. We wore short shorts and flirted with silly boys we'd never see again.

Title: None of Us Stand Alone
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: PG
Length: 681 words
Content notes: This is post Endgame
Author notes: My grandmother used to say 'Charity begins at home' because she never gave anyone anything.
Summary: Tony has a surprise for Steve at his charity ball.

Fandom 50

Kind of late for a first entry but here is one.

Has fandom changed or have I?

I was never in a fandom until the 2000’s. I did not know what a ‘zine was. I did not know what a con was. I never heard of fanfiction. I was a Star Wars fan from way back.

I got into the LOTR fandom right after the first movie came out. It was quite hostile, to be honest. There were wars between character writers and real person writers, between shippers of different pairings, between hetters and slashers. It was ugly. There was gatekeeping then, too.

I decided early on that I came into this not to fight but to enjoy and I did. I had my own website and ran a Yahoo group that hosted at least 100 stories a week in its heyday. I welcomed all. It wasn’t perfect but it was good.

Is today different?

I think so. I think we have a reflection of our divisive society in fandom. There are things we’re not ‘allowed’ to write now because they might upset someone. There are people who want to police Ao3 to make sure it doesn’t hurt their feelings and that it does reflect their ‘moral’ codes. An example is someone once complained because characters were eating meat and I did not warn for it.

Ao3 was born to combat gatekeeping and censorship in fandom. Other sites caved. Fanfic dot com made their site completely shite when they kicked all the adult stories out. I never bothered with them again. Livejournal was sold once then again to some Russian oligarch who decided to purge all adult anything, because there were rumblings of kiddie porn, and by that, I mean stories with underage fictional characters. Ao3 was born out of frustration over these events and others like them.

So what do you do about these things?

As of today, we do still have freedom of speech here in the US, where Ao3 is based. I say let people write what they will, as long as they are not inciting specific violence. Writers write violence, rape, child abuse out of a need for catharsis many times. Or maybe they are angry and rather than take it out on a real person, they write something violent. Let it be. We write for our own reasons and we don’t owe any explanations of those to anyone.

Oddly enough, the young seem to be the ones who want to gatekeep. Life is hard, kids. If you don’t want to read certain kinds of fiction, then DON’T CLICK ON IT. It’s that simple.

Fandom has changed but not that much. There will always be those who want more rules and to control others. That’s life. We must guard against that and keep fandom and fans free to express themselves.






*Crossposted at fandom50challenge

Be warned.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/

 Description: This is a challenge to make fifty posts about fandom things. They can be whatever kind of posts you’d like - movie reviews, recs, a story about meeting a fellow fan, cosplaying … anything!

What are you fannish about?
♥ Movies?
♥ Hedgehogs?
♥ Baking?
♥ Fictional characters?

Why not post about all of them this year? This is a challenge to make fifty posts about fandom things. They can be whatever kind of posts you’d like - movie reviews, recs, a story about meeting a fellow fan, cosplaying … anything!
The challenge runs for a year (well, 11 months), so a pace of one post per week plus a couple would do it. .

If you’d like to do a theme, feel free. Some ideas:
♦ 50 fictional characters that I want to meet in real life
♦ 50 fanvid recs
♦ 50 television episodes that were lifechanging
♦ 50 fanfic plots I’ll never write

You don’t need to do a theme if you don’t want to. You can make fifty random fan-adjacent posts.

If you’d like even more structure or if you’d like to share your Fandom 50 with others, you can commit to the challenge by signing up.

To sign up, comment on this post with the following:
<b>Name: </b> <b>My Fandom 50 entries will be posted here:</b> (your tag URL) <b>My theme (optional): </b> <b>My journal status: </b> (locked/unlocked, any content warnings, willing to add to my circle, etc.) <b>Anything else people should know? </b>

Happy Fandom Fun!
xpost @ tumblr

Disclaimer: I nabbed this from swannee's Fannish Fifty from 2023 and with their permission.

Challenge #12
Create a Rec Countdown. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


I decided to go with television shows since we watch a lot of tv.

General shows from 5 to 1.

5. The Andy Griffith Show - a show from the early 1960s and can be found on many networks. Thuis sbiow is about rural life somewhere in the south in the 60s. It star Andy Griffith, Don Knotts and a small Ron Howard. Andy Griffith was born and raised in a town 20 minutes from me and it is a lot like Mayberry in his show.

4. The Big Bang Theory - A show about scientist/nerds working at Cal Tech and living the the nerdy life. The show focuses in Sheldon Cooper played by Jim Parsons. It can be seen in rerun s as well.

3. M*A*S*H = This one is an anti=war show that takes place in a MASH unit in Korea during the Korean War of the early 1950s. We follow the ups and downs of the doctors, nurses and supporting staff in their daily life at war. I loved the show never lost its anti-war flavor nor its humanity.

2. Boston Lega - lawyer show with James Spoader, William Shatner and Canice Bergen among a sparking cast. This show runs from the ridiculous to the sublime and Alan Shore and Denny Crane, played by Spader and Shatner, are not to be missed.


1. Babylon 5 - In my opinion, the best of the space operas, B5 takes place on a space station and its cast if characters are much harder to in pin down than calling them good or bad guys. One character says that no one is as he seems there. There is a lot of plot and a lot if action in the show. I think you can catch it on Prime right now.


Honorable mentiions; Stargate: SG1, NCIS, Star TrekTOS, Star Trek DS9, Doctor Who.